Utah Sports Ruckus: Separate sports from school

Kansas freshman NCAA college basketball player Andrew Wiggins leaves a news conference at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kan., Monday, March 31, 2014. Wiggins announced he would be entering the NBA draft.

Our universities should not serve as corporate minor league systems for pro sports any longer. Young people who want to expand their minds and get a true education should not have to pay ridiculous tuition amounts to support professional athletic programs.

Universities should be welcome to provide students with organized athletic opportunities, but they should be extracurricular, voluntary organizations for actual students or they should be self-funded programs.

So what to do with gifted young athletes?

Professional sports organizations should be able to sign them to contracts as soon as they are of legal age to sign such agreements.

There should also be no draft systems or maximum contracts.

If, for example, the Utah Jazz wants to offer Andrew Wiggins a 12-year, $200 million contract after this season, the team should be able to do so. If it had wanted to offer that contract before he spent a year under the total and utter farce of being a “student” athlete at Kansas University, it should have been able to do that as well.

Professional sports leagues should have a hard salary cap if they are worried about keeping things balanced and fair. There should be no luxury tax or other wink-wink exceptions. If the salary cap is $100 million per team, then that is the limit.

The hard salary cap and the elimination of the draft and max contracts would balance out the leagues competitively, get rid of "tanking" in the NBA and solve myriad other problems with our sports leagues, including the un-American idea of having players “drafted” by teams rather than being able to choose their own employers. It would also solve the current hot-button issue of college athletes unionizing or being paid.

Having the “right” to draft a player has not helped teams all that much anyway. How often has a top draft pick in the NBA, for example, led his team to a championship while still under his rookie contract?

LeBron James couldn’t do it. Michael Jordan was in his seventh season when he led the Bulls to their first title.

The pro leagues, not our universities, would be responsible for establishing their own minor league systems to develop and stockpile players. All players under contract by the organization, whether assigned to the top-level roster or a minor league roster, would count toward the salary cap.

Of course, this concept has wrinkles to iron out that cannot all be detailed in this article.

In any event, American universities should not be paying the contracts of young athletes or compensating them in any way. Playing a sport has nothing to do with higher learning.

Nothing. Nada. Zilch.

If an athlete wants to pay to take classes and pursue a higher education during the offseason or in his or her spare time, as thousands of working adults do in this country, then that is outstanding, and such educational pursuits should be encouraged.

If, at any time, a university student was offered a job in professional sports, he or she would be free to drop out and pursue that career if desired.

Would this be a big change in our country? Yes, it would. But the changes would be rational and would cause us to evolve and improve as a society.

Popular Comments

I agree. What in the world does inter school athletic competition have to do
with education? When was the last time Harvard or Yale or Columbia had a great
football team? BYU-Idaho dropped athletics, added a comprehensive intramural
activities
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12:06 p.m. April 9, 2014

Top comment

Wiscougarfan

River Falls, WI

While the author makes several good and interesting points in this article, his
assertion that sports have nothing to do with academics is ridiculous. As a
college professor I'll be the first to tell you that sports have a lot to
do with
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11:57 a.m. April 9, 2014

Top comment

androol

Queen Creek, AZ

The simplest and most cost effective way to eliminate the vast majority of the
issues facing collegiate athletics these days is to eliminate athletic
scholarships. Keep the athletic department, still offer the sports, but stop
offering scholarships.
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